Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I put on record the Democrat position on this. I have heard some of the things that the minister has been saying and I think that perhaps the words ‘representative’ and ‘representation’ can mean a lot of different things. It is probably not his intent, but I do think some of his last comments suggested or could leave the impression that the problems with the current native title determination process predominantly fall at the feet of the representative bodies. I am certainly not saying that they are blameless, particularly in a few instances, but, even in some of the areas in which rep bodies have not been able to deliver as adequately or as quickly as is desirable, some of that is due to factors outside matters we are dealing with here and matters within the act itself, such as resourcing and capacity et cetera.

That was very clear from the evidence given at the Senate committee inquiry, not just from Indigenous representatives but from the mining council as well. They were calling for more resourcing, more capacity and more assistance for rep bodies. I wanted to make it clear, certainly from the Democrats’ perspective, that no impression should be left that rep bodies are at the core of problems that exist. I will not go too far down the track of pointing to some other reasons why I think there are problems, although I do think the lack of enthusiastic embracing of native title by a few state governments in certain circumstances could certainly be part of the reason, as could be some individual companies at various times. There are always a range of reasons.

The minister has read out components from the act about what rep bodies do, and he is right to again point out that this is about getting the job done. I think it is right to point out in response that, from the Democrats’ perspective, our key concern is also about getting the job done. But part of the job is to represent. As I said, ‘represent’ means different things. You can represent in a legal sense, in a political sense and in an in-between advocacy sort of sense. Some of those are appropriate and some of them are not. Certainly, rep bodies are not meant to be there to just be large-scale advocacy representatives for Indigenous people in general. Unfortunately, at the moment, we do not have terribly effective representative bodies for Indigenous representation in a political sense either, but that is a separate debate to the one we are on now.

I should say, though, that it is that lack of other avenues for genuine representation of Indigenous views and voices on a whole range of issues that is in part making people almost involuntarily or subconsciously look a bit towards the role of native title rep bodies. They are one of the few Indigenous related institutions that are still in place—that have not been pulled down, defunded, turned on their heads or continually shifted from one role to another. That is partly why, to some extent, that wider notion of what sort of other role rep bodies could play is potentially creeping into people’s views, I suspect. But, because it is moving outside the specifics of the native title legislation, I do not want to go further down that path at the moment, beyond flagging that it is a real problem and that the government’s own National Indigenous Council has acknowledged it as a real problem—that is, representation of Indigenous voices at the regional level. If that were there more effectively then, frankly, apart from anything else, it would ease some of the burden on native title rep bodies, whichever way you want to define it and constrain it.

But it is appropriate to pull it back to what the minister said, to look at what native title rep bodies are there for, and they are there to assist in the progressing of native title claims and getting the job done. That is what they should be there for. They should not be there, ideally, for a range of other perhaps linked but broader reasons. In that sense, there is some substance to what the minister said. But I think it is also worth pointing out the specific nature of native title, the unique aspects of it and the benefit in terms of the effectiveness of the process, because it is appropriate to be pulling it back to that and for there to be that sense of a representative body being able to represent rather than just being a pure service delivery organisation in the most narrow sense of the words. That is at the heart of what these amendments are about. They do not seek to make rep bodies into some other regional council a la ATSIC or anything like that. They seek to ensure, in my view, that there is still a clear link there that would, more often than not, mean that the outcomes would be better. They would be better for Indigenous people, but I think in general terms that also means that they would be better for everybody.